Sunday, Day Five

Today was the second weekend day. Max was still at his church program in the morning, so I slept to 10:00, wandered down stairs, and did absolutly nothing for a little while. Then we got a call saying that a bunch of GAPPers were going swimming, so Max's dad took me to a bus station where everyone was meeting. It was a really long ride, and it's been very "hot" here. I don't think the pool was far away, just not directly on the bus route. We use a lot of public transportation, but they drive a lot too.

We went into the pool and it looked like, well, like a pool. There was a big meddow area around the actual swimming pool where people hung out. We don't have one in Kirkwood, but I'm sure there are pools like that in America. We sat around, swam a bit, went off the high dive, sat around, and played vollyball. It wasn't too exciting, but fun.

One more thing: all the people our age wear normal swim suit and the nasty old people wear Speedos. We tried to explain this to the Germans, but they didn't understand. Maybe it's just normal for them.

I also had some German french fries- the same thing, but thier katsup was a bit wierd. More tomato-ey. Max's dad drove us home, and then we had a BBQ with Max's grandparents and aunt. We talked and played chess with Max's grandfather- it was cool.

Cooler, however, was what we did afterwards. Soccer is thier life here. Everything has to do with it- clothes, talk, everything. It's also the EM (European Cup), so we get to watch this go on in front of our eyes. It's really cool. Sunday, we painted our faces, dressed up in German colors, and went to a bar to watch, at a public viewing, Germany play Soccer.

Besides having a Soundcraft K2 and a really nice house speaker system (the game was on a couple of EVs like in the black box, but they had a reinforcment system with some Community speakers that sounded really good), the bar/club (called Riekhof) had a huge projector and a lot of half-drunk Germans who REALLY care about what happens in the game.

The game was actually really fun to watch. Germany won (2-0, everytime a goal was made the entire club stood up and cheered). I think thier team was just better than Poland's. After the win, we walked through Harburg (the subarb/small city that we live in). Everyone in a car just stuck thier hand on the horn for at least fifteen minutes. They also drove around hanging out of sunroofs waving huge German flags. It was quite an expierence- something that's a bit hard to describe with words.

It was 11:30 when we got home, so I went straight to sleep (as it was Sunday night)

I didn't take any pictures today- I didn't want to take my camera to the pool and then my battery was too low while watching the game. I'm working on a Flickr solution- I have an account, but it dosen't resize my 10.2 megapixel pictures automatically, so I can't put many on. I think Max has photoshop, so I can work with that a bit tommrow.

Robert